MPs are much better at sensing public opinion than many give them credit for. Emails in the inbox are an ever-present reality, but chatting to residents and keeping an eye on the way this issue has entered the public consciousness are also what we are good at. In a nutshell, people have judged that lockdown rules were broken, and expected much better. Those who had particularly sad or traumatic family experiences feel it most acutely and are deeply hurt and upset. Trivialising or ignoring this is a big mistake.
It isn’t just anger, however. It is ridicule that is actually more dangerous for the PM in the longer term. If people are no longer laughing with him, but laughing at him, then this is corrosive. Does this all mean that he has to go, though?
The real question before we embark upon a prolonged bout of navel-gazing is: what would be the effect of a change of leader? Apart from the obvious points about the disruption and delay caused by a leadership election and the inevitable pressure for a new mandate via a general election, new dividing lines appear, a new set of dissenters is created and new tensions arise. Former PMs are always the subject of intense media interest, and this one would be a very prominent king over the water.
Like it or not, Boris is a huge political figure, charismatic and distinctive in our politics. What he says and does would be akin to Lady Thatcher after her traumatic defenestration, which left deep wounds. Changes of leadership should be like landing a plane safely, not crashing it into the ground as we did in 1990. Events can still develop in a way that would make a change unavoidable, but I’m not sure that stage has been reached.
Anonymous MP 3: The 2019 intake
Boris and his team have taken the backbenchers for granted for too long, resulting in the issues over the last few months. If you’re an average, decent, non-brown-nosing 2019er, the Government hasn’t appreciated you very much, if at all. In normal circumstances, a good, strong working relationship would have dealt with that, but because so few of the whips are any good, that relationship rarely exists. And this has been a dreadful problem, given that the 2019ers are almost a third of the parliamentary party.
And with the 2019ers, there are two groups of us. Those who have been thrust into PPS roles far too early. And then those of us on the back benches who have loyally stood by, taken all the nonsense, but when we ask for something very small in the grander scheme of things, you’ll be lucky if you’re taken seriously, let alone get to see any action. And then No 10 want to know why people are talking together about their frustrations and how they can get Boris to listen!
So, we are not starting from a great place for discerning the PM’s future over the next few weeks. We have held Boris in high esteem, but have felt used because of not being taken seriously. Some say to us (normally those with enormous majorities) “get a grip”, but maybe if their majorities were as slim as ours, they would have different advice.
The 2019ers have given the mandate to Boris to lead and it is time that the PM realised it, got out of his bunker and got rid of some of the totally useless team around him. The next few weeks will need to see a rebalancing of power on speed, if the PM is to get the 2019ers behind him. And it is 50/50 whether he will. Boris is doing now what should have happened years ago – engaging and understanding and supporting. But he should also take some credit, because he is making up for the fact that his Cabinet Ministers have been equally inaccessible – a hangover from Dominic Cummings’s time in No 10.
Whether or not Boris pulls through the next few weeks will be dependent on two things. Can he lead our party to electoral success – both in 2024 and this year? And has Boris been truthful to Parliament about his actions? The answers will become clear once Sue Gray’s report is completed and a statement made to the House. To think that we can be charmed to turn a blind eye to these things is nonsense. It is literally in the balance.
